Social intranets provide an environment where employees can freely collaborate on information that is of value to the business and benefits the organization by increasing employee engagement. Engaged employees are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs and less willing to entertain the first job opportunity that comes their way. In its employee engagement overview brochure, Gallup showed that high employee engagement led to less absenteeism, less turnover, higher profitability and higher productivity. Increased employee engagement leads to higher user adoption rates and cross departmental collaboration, making it easier for CIOs to justify the investments made in their corporate intranets.

There are three key steps to consider when implementing a social intranet. First, create a governance plan that is easy to follow and enables employees to freely collaborate. One of the biggest intranet user adoption killers is a governance plan that doesn’t allow employees to actually use the system. Next, create a social intranet design strategy focused on the things that matter most to employees. Employee recognition, targeted private or public communities, ideation and success stories are just a few examples that will keep employees coming back for more. Finally, implement a technology platform that allows for the creation of public and private communities, wiki’s, microblogs, document storage, collaboration and private social network integration. Microsoft, Jive Software, Telligent and Newsgator have solutions that can provide all of these capabilities and more.

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